Professional Advisors

You can be assured that giving through the Branch County Community Foundation is right for your clients if you can answer "yes" to any of the following questions about them: • Do my clients care deeply about the greater Branch County community? • Do they give to more than one charitable cause? • Are they interested in creating a personal or family legacy in their community? • Would they like to stay personally involved with their charitable gift dollars? • Do they want to receive the maximum tax benefit for their charitable contribution? • Are they interested in creating a private foundation but not interested in the work that goes with it? • Do they place a priority on sound financial management of their contributions? Key Benefits for Your Clients • Your clients can address a broad range of local needs. • Arts. Education. Health. The environment. These are just a few areas of community life that your client can specifically address by giving through the Community Foundation. Every year the Community Foundation makes hundreds of grants to local agencies and programs to address a broad range of needs in our area. • Your clients' donations will work forever. • When your clients donate through our endowment funds, the principal of their gift is never spent. It is carefully invested, and the earnings are used annually to address specific local causes and issues. • Your clients can create a personal legacy of giving.

As a financial advisor, your clients expect you to provide sound counsel about the management and investment of their assets. You can also help them by listening for and identifying financial situations when a charitable gift to the community foundation would be in their interest: • Year-end tax planning identifies a need for greater tax deductions. • Estate planning identifies the possibility of significant estate taxes. • A charitably minded client is uneasy donating the principal of retirement savings. • Your client is interested in setting up a charitable foundation. • Your client is passionate about helping meet a specific community need and is ready to make a significant gift. • Your client wants to establish a scholarship for a special interest, but doesn't know how to begin. • Your client owns highly appreciated stock in a company that is about to be acquired. • Your client currently has a private foundation that may not be distributing minimum grants. • Your client has most of his/her assets tied up in a closely held company. • Your client has a substantial IRA and 401(k) assets within his/her estate.

Keep Your Client's Legacy Local. ​In 50 years, $972 billion is expected to pass from one generation to the next in Michigan. In just 10 years, $140.6 billion will have transferred. National research projects a $53 trillion transfer of wealth across the United States. While the average transfer nationwide will peak after 50 years, wealth transfer in many Michigan counties will crest in twenty to thirty years. In Branch County, the greatest wealth transfer will likely happen between 2030 and 2035. ​ Much of this wealth is currently invested in family homes and farms, retirement accounts and other appreciated assets - some of which may be heavily taxed if given to heirs. A one-time opportunity to create permanent benefits for our communities. If only 5% of local wealth during the next 10 years was earmarked for permanent charitable endowment, the resulting $28 million would generate millions every year for community projects and priorities in our communities - forever. The Community Foundation invites your clients to secure our future by helping to build permanent endowments dedicated to improving quality of life in our area. When your clients give through the Community Foundation, we can establish a fund in their family name, in the name of a loved one, or the name of a cause that's important to them. Endowed funds last forever and grow over time because the principal is never spent. Earnings are used to make grants in the name of your client's fund - creating a local legacy of giving. Ways to Give If your client is retired, a planned gift from their estate may be more attractive to than a large gift today. ​ Three easy ways to make a planned gift to your community include: • Designate the Community Foundation as the beneficiary of an IRA, 401(k) or other retirement account. These assets can lose up to 70% of their value when passed to heirs; changing the beneficiary designation does not involve modifying the estate plan. • Designate the Community Foundation as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy. Again, there is no need to modify an estate plan. • Add the Community Foundation to an estate plan. Community Foundation staff will work with you to decide what cause or which organizations in the community will benefit from the gift. Talk to us to learn about all of the giving options and choose the one that's right you or your client and our community.

This policy covers they types of gift the Community Foundation accepts and provides guidance to prospective donors and their advisors when making gifts to the Community Foundation. For additional information or to ask about your particular situation, please contact us!

​Fund agreements can be written to create funds that are permanently endowed, long-term (principal can be spent), or temporary. With the exception of the special project fund sample agreement, the following samples are for permanently endowed funds. Please contact us to receive a sample of a long-term or temporary fund agreement for any of the fund types you see below: • Memorial Funds • Unrestricted Funds • Field-of-Interest Funds • Designated Funds • Advisor-Managed Funds • Donor-Advised Funds • Organizational Funds • Special Project Funds

Scholarship funds are field-of-interest funds that awards grants to individuals for tuition and education-related expenses at tax-exempt educational institutions---such as a college/university or vocational/technical institute, commercial art school, school of nursing, or other accredited institution of higher education. ​The Community Foundation does not award scholarship grants to provide funds for room and board or travel expenses because these are taxable to the recipient and therefore are not charitable in nature. Guidelines for establishing a scholarship fund are provided below:

When a loved one dies, keeping their memory alive through memorial gifts is one way of honoring their life, finding comfort, and preserving their memory. The Branch County Community Foundation is honored to accept memorial contributions as a fitting tribute to those who have enriched our lives and our community. You can establish a new fund or have gifts directed to an existing fund, whichever is the most appropriate for your situation. It just takes one call to the Community Foundation, we want to keep the process simple, and will finalize the details when you are ready. To assure that we have a common understanding with the family and friends of the loved one of how memorial gifts are best used, the Community Foundation has developed this Memorial Gift Acceptance Policy and the Memorandum of Understanding and Memorial Gift Direction Form.